It tried him. It reached for Crissand, and for Cevulirn, nearest to him, but Tristen was as quick and they were wary, so that instantly the gray space cleared, and Auld Syes stared at him, her gray hair all disordered, her eyes dark as cinders.
—The same kind, Auld Syes said, but not the same. King thou art. Take up the sword!
“What is it?” Crissand asked, and Cevulirn, silent, stared grim-faced toward the north.
But Tristen found no Name for it: he perceived only the sweep of winds toward an abyss out of which that Wind had come.
“Magic,” was the best Word he could find. “Magic gone to sorcery. Not Hasufin. It was Hasufin opposing us, but he’s gone. This remains.”
He could only think of the cloud in the gray space, pouring continually over the Edge. And the gray space continued to pour out its force, as if magic had no limit and the flood would never cease.
“What’s amiss?” Uwen asked, looking from them to the north and back again. The horses were restive, disturbed by the streaks in the grass. “Summat’s goin’ on.”
“He’s gone,” Tristen said again. A magic gone amiss: in the pre-cise way Men parsed words he found no words for it. Sorcery was wizardry turned askew. What could Men know of what he had felt opposing him, its power and its grip on the elements?
If it existed, it was nameless, unless someone had bidden it into Shapeless existence long, long ago; it owned no master now, and it was by all he perceived every other creature’s enemy. What it wanted, it willed, and what it willed, it willed without a thought to any creature but itself. It was magical, and it was free, and set no limits on itself such as Mauryl had continually dinned into him. It had learned no patience with frustration such as Emuin had taught him.
And to wield magic after that unfettered fashion when there was only oneself with that power… that was inconceivable to him: what if there were no Mauryl, no Emuin, no Uwen or Cefwyn? What if there never could be for him a Crissand or a Cevulirn?
Lord Sihhë! the people cried in the streets of Henas’amef. Lord Sihhë, the word had gone through an army discouraged from calling him King.
But what was this thing?
And what was he?
Sihhë? And what was that?
That was the question of all questions, the one question no one of his friends could answer. He was not sure even Mauryl could have answered it completely—although Mauryl had known to call on the Sihhë to deal with the threat Hasufin posed.
And did that not inform him something? Mauryl had known that magic would stop Hasufin, when his student Hasufin turned. So Mauryl had understood: Mauryl had known the source of Hasufin’s wrongdoing.
Mauryl could not defeat this magic without help, and then had defeated only Hasufin, and that not completely. Not even the five Sihhë-lords had completely overcome this threat, for through Hasufin this threat found its way into Althalen after the five were gone.
The question began to gnaw at all confidence… it came as an assault, an opening thrust from the enemy.
What was he?
Lord of Shadow, with the Lord of the Sun. His blade was Illusion and Truth, dividing one from the other.
“Where,” he asked those with him, “where do you suppose the Sihhë came from?”
“The north,” Uwen said. “As they say.”
“But before that?”
“It was never recorded,” Cevulirn said. “Not in any account.”
“They were not good,” Tristen said. “It’s nowhere recorded that they were good, only that they were strong.”
“Barrakkëth was the friend of our house,” Crissand said They wielded magic; they lived together under one roof and rode and fought together in the south. But they were not all kind, or good, or gentle—in fact the histories recorded the opposite: yet they had never wielded their magic to seize all will from their subjects never turned it to have their own way from each other, fought no wars within the five. They had that much wisdom.
Only five, and no children, no women: could such as the Sihhë arise by nature… or were they something created, as he was created creatures of less than a lifetime?
There were no tombs such as Ulernan’s, no trace of their passing
It was never recorded that they died, only, the records said, that Barrakkëth passed the rule to another, and that was all.
He felt cold in all his lims, the chill of earth and darkness His gloved fingers maintained their grip on the reins. His eyes maintained a hold on the sky and the horizon: he would not slip into that dark would not go over the Edge, where the Wind alone held sway Lord of Shadows, Lord of the Sun: without shadow and light never settling.
“Speak to me,” he begged those with him.
‘‘M’lord?” Uwen answered, that potent, commanding voice that brought the land and the day and the war back to him. And Uwen experienced of such demands, heaved a great sigh and remarked how fair a day it was: “As there’s a good breeze, ain’t there? Which wi’ the sun beatin’ down on armor is a good thing, ain’t it?”
“A good thing,” he said desperately. His heart was hammering against his ribs. He breathed as if he had run a race. He had met the enemy. Crissand and Cevulirn gazed at him with alarm.
But he looked to the horizon, where trees met meadow… where still more stragglers, peasants and battered men-at-arms, survivors of lost battles and defeated lords, came to join their march. They had flowed to him since last night with the currents moving in the world, and after what he had seen, he knew that all things opposed to what sat in Ilefínian must flow to his banner… all that was Elwynim, all that was the south, whoever would, be could not deny them now. Auld Syes was the voice that spoke for them, but the summoning magic ran through the land and the woods and hour by hour the rocks gave up fugitives such as Aeself and his men… he felt pres-ences far and wide; he felt their moving through the land though to the east he was blind… a veil he himself drew over that one force his heart yearned to see, with all that was wrong in it.
“The Sihhë ruled for hundreds of years,” he said, thinking of Cefwyn and Ryssand. “They never fought each other.”
“It’s not recorded that they did,” Cevulirn said to him, and, perhaps thinking of the same conflict: “Wiser than we, it seems.”
Restraint ran between the lines of all that Barrakketh had written in his Book… he remembered. Line after Line Unfolded to him, not alone the nature of magic, but the Shape of the world, the restraint that let the world Unfold in its own time.
He had burned that Book to keep it from other hands, and now it seemed to him that he might have possessed and destroyed that for which the junior archivist had murdered his senior: that not only Men had yearned to find among those mundane letters and requests for potions the very thing he had had… and destroyed.
Knowledge of the enemy was there.
The fount of those words was in himself, but now that he inquired of it, he found of all the words that Barrakketh had ever poured onto parchment, the two true ones were written on opposite sides of his sword: Truth, and Illusion.
“They never fought each other,” he said aloud.
And the truest thing of all was the Edge between the two, the dividing line, the line of creation and destruction, dream and disillusion. There had to be both, for there to be movement at all in the world.
In his heart he could all but hear Mauryl’s voice saying, Boy! Boy, listen to me! Pay attention, now! This is the crux of the lesson!
“Ye’re woolgatherin’,” Uwen observed. “Lad, are ye with us?”